v""" - r

TIIEIOIS
. speaks with great respect for the old mast b , f
THE BOSS stl 11 er urner s way o
king. One _aspect of Fred's modus operandi' that h h
wo ' . e as come to
eciate more with the passing of the years was h's d ('be •
ap Pr , . . 1 e I ration.
f rom Fitzgerald s desrnpt10n, .
he almost sounds li'k R Fd
e oger e erer
lining up a backhand passing shot: there's an awful lot going on real
fast, but to the onlooker, he's got all the time in the world.
The Gippsland team might have been on a routine job when
there'd be a sudden outbreak, a fire whirl or a ffare-up from a larger
Tony Fitzgerald learned his craft from an old foreSCe~ na~ed Fred conflagration.
Whiting, and he reminisces fondly about the apprenticeship. 'Here 'I'd be doing a song and dance,' says Fitzgerald, 'wanting to
I was, just a fresh-faced kid, working on a fire crew m Gippsland. do something. And Fred would just get out the tobacco and roll a
They were tough men, wouldn't give you any second chances, smoke. Always. Probably take a good two minutes. He'd be doing
especially if you were from university. They'd been working with more than lighting a smoke, of course; what he was doing was watch-
fire for generations. Fred was nearing retirement then, and he took ing-he knew there was no point doing anything until he'd done
me under his wing. He wanted to teach, I wanted to learn.' an assessment. You don't do that, you're liable to make a mistake.
Fred Whiting had a telling nickname for a bushfire: he called it Maybe a fatal one.'
the Boss. "'What's the Boss doing?" he'd ask. "Where's he think he's Fitzgerald doesn't smoke, but he has absorbed the lesson: the need
going?" And it is like a boss-it can crush you any time it wants. to stand back, study the situation, use your experience to work out
That's the first thing I learned: the fire's always in control. You have what's about to happen. That's what he was doing on top of Mount
to respect it. You can bomb it or bulldoze it all you like, but it can Sugarloaf, and it's a lesson he's attempted to pass on to the generation
turn on you any time. Sometimes you can play round with the boss, coming up behind him.
swing him round to your way of thinking. If he's in a good mood, Much of what he's looking at involves the wind .
maybe he'll go along with you. But when he's on the rampage-look Of course there are a lot of other things you need to know-the
out! Get the hell out of there!' topography, the vegetation, the fire history-but when the crunch
Tony Fitzgerald sees a lot of things in a fire, but one of them is a comes, wind is the vital component. Not just the ambient wind, but
challenge, a mystery you have to call upon all your experience and the wind created by the fire itself, the convection wind.
guile to unravel. He thinks about fire the way you imagine a race- 'The fire sends up a convection column,' he explains. 'The hot
horse trainer thinks about a recalcitrant thoroughbred that shows a air rises. The effect is like a bicycle pump, sucking from above; air is
glimmer of promise. pulled in from all around.'
'When you're looking at a lire,' he explains, 'you're thinking, Can This was the reason for that eerie stillness so many felt just before
bnng it round to my way of thinking? Can I use more fire to coerce the fire struck. The convection column was so powerful that it was
it? Maybe put in a fuel break, guide it towards a natural obstacle a dragging in the north-westerly gale that was driving the fire, negat-
creek or a gully.' '
ing its momentum.
Fred Whiting has been dea cl rror many years now, bu t Fitzgerald
'We were in the Ice of this huge plume of convection, north-west
90 91
 y-
IINGLAIE-150 TIIEIISS
of where we were, and it was sucking in the dominant wind,' says 'The fire might be burning across a fi k.
Tony Fitzgerald. 'Convective wind is the fire manager's stock in .
exp Iams, ve- I1ometre front,' Fogarty
trade. That's what Fred was looking at. It's the fire's way of talking
but because of the drought the h 'd•
to you. You have to understand it and use it to your advantage.' . . ' umi Ity and the three
des1ccatmg days the week before fuel c
That wind blowing around Aaron Redmond's feet was the . . ' irom a much broader
area-five to six times that distance- . . .
convective wind in action, air being sucked into the inferno to was contnbutmg its
energy to the blaze. In parts of the affected th c I I
replace the air that was rising in the column. area, e ,ue oad
Wind, of course, is just one of the things the fire manager is study- would have reached thirty to forty tonnes h Th
per ectare. e
ing. 'You watch the way . the smoke moves, the way the flames are first rush of the fire would have incinerated the fine fuel-
being fanned. ls it running up the trees? Racing through the crown? twigs ofless than six millimetres , leaves , dry grass. Theneth
heavy fuel-logs, branches and so on would· · · d
Is it shearing?' - 1gn1te, an
Sometimes, like the Vedic Indians or the ancient Slavs, Fitzgerald keep burning for another twenty minutes to half an hour.
talks about fire in almost anthropomorphic terms. 'You get two All of this contributes to an eruption of gaseous hot air that could
convection columns hitting each other-maybe from two different blast as much as a kilometre out from the fire. The heat wave is a
ridges-and at some stage they're going to fight it out. They'll push, result of both convection and radiation, and it is composed of burnt
pull, twist each other, and you'll get this interaction between the two. and unburnt products of the combustion, including gases--known
That's when you get whirlwinds, roofs lifted, trees sheared, cork- as pyrolysates-from the thermal degradation of cellulose and hemi-
screwed out of the ground.' cellulose. That's the technical aspect.
While Tony Fitzgerald and his crew were fighting for their lives The un-technical aspect is that it can kill you. Convection means
on the edge of the escarpment their colleague, Ranger Cam Beardsell, that the column's natural direction would be upwards. But because
was at Dunmoochin down below, watching it run up at them. of the ferocity of the wind on Black Saturday, it was forced down,
'Cam said it was like a wave that rippled up the ranges: flame lashing out like a chameleon zapping insects.
sheeting above the tops of the trees in a continuous pulsing motion. Th is also explains one of the things that puzzled fir~fighters in
It would move, stop, roll forward, pause again'-presumably it was the aftermath: why many of the victims did not appear to be burnt,
pausing to devour the fuel within reach-'then it would go skipping why one poor soul, for example, died untouched in the middle of the
over the tops of the crowns.' Strathewen football oval. It is because a fire like this will not merely
burn its victims, it will often asphyxiate them, sometimes from great
Liam Fogarty, the DSE's Assistant Fire Chief, is another who has distances-up to five or six hundred metres.
made fire his life's work. Like Fitzgerald, he worked on fire crews The St Andrews firefighters were struck by the number of people
in his youth, learning from the old hands before he went to univer- who died immediately after the wind change. 'It was like a vast wave
sity. Fogarty has worked as a senior scientist in places as diverse as of heat had swept up Jacksons Road in seconds,' commente~ one
Indonesia and New Zealand. Expanding upon the intensity of the • d oors you were okay, if you were out m the
membe r. ,I f you were m
convection process, he comments that one of th e most fa scinating open you were dead.'
aspects of convection in a megafire is the size of its footprint.
92 93
j
 IINOLAIE-l50
intensity it throws out embers and burning
TANKER TWO
As the fire ga th ers '
. . . II maybe three or four kilometres ahead, then further
brands-inina y,
.
· ·11 ·
Th will ignite new fires, which w1 in turn feed their
as 1t grows. ese . . .
f
. the main blaze-sending out more incendiaries
energy bac k into .. . .
. c rward gathering strength, a self-sustaining cycle
And so 1t storms 1•0 ,
of destruction. . , .
'There isn't enough oxygen in the fire, explains Fogarty:
-1'
(tt

The fire is sucking air in, trying to burn all this fuel, but it
can't-so all these gases start to accumulate. The vaporised
eucalyptus oil will be captured there. Finally when enough

I{inglake West Tanker Two is still at the property on Coombs Road.

There's no chance of escape-the road is overgrown and the fire
would only overtake them. They're better off here, where there is
oxygen comes in, it will suddenly flash and flare and burst up water; not to mention that they have a responsibility to protect the
·dents sheltering in the house.
above the fire. res (
fhey stand and fight for as long as possible, extinguishing
What Fogarty is describing are the 'fireballs' that filled so many what they can, batting away the rain of sticks and burning debris
witnesses of the inferno with dread: they aren't so much 'balls' as that hammers them. 'Horizontal hail' is Frank Allan's description.
massive bursts of igniting gas that can shoot hundreds of metres The air is wind-whipped and thick with smoke, shot through with
into the air-or snake out horizontally, torching houses that would
iridescence.
otherwise have been untouched. 'At one stage, I had the hose on full bore-and it was coming
All of this amounts to an extraordinary amount of energy being
straight back at me.' There's one bush he swears he's put out at least
released every second of the fire's existence. five times, but it keeps springing back to life. He's bowled over by a
A fire is regarded as unstoppable, even with the help of aerial
branch so heavy that the crew have to drag it off him. He staggers to
bombardment, when it generates 3500-4000 kilowatts per metre.
his feet, does a quick check: nothing damaged. Gets back into it as
Firefighters know not to get in front of it; at best, they can attack its
the inferno rolls over them.
flanks, attempt to pinch it off, angle it in a particular direction.
Nowhere on Black Saturday is the fire any more brutal than
The Black Saturday fires generated something in the vicinity
here, at the crest of the escarpment, just after the wind change. In
of 80,000 kilowatts per metre. In the forest, where the DSE crew
-f:. established their defence lines, that would have translated into
the houses and on the rocky roads nearby is where the -heaviest loss
of life occurs: in Bald Spur Road, twenty-eight people stay to fight
temperatures anywhere between 1200 and 1500 degrees.
the fire and twenty-one of them die. Pine Ridge Road tells a similar
story: there are around twenty deaths, nine of them in one house.
Ten die right here in Coombs Road.
While there's water, Frank feels confident that they have a
chance. They've already been fighting for half an hour, and normally
that would be enough. But not today. As the intensity of the storm
94 95
}.
 T
" .
increases an a
pool begins to splutter.

IIN8LAIE-S50
d d y turns to night, the floater pump in the swimming
. , .
Frank looks at it in despair. Its running out of fuel. Any second
co rn
. not long wre.
1ntO
bee ,
,

TANIEITWO
What they see there stuns them 'L'k
•
1
e a 1unar
rnents Frank. Hardly recognisable from the pl
landscape
ace we
'd d . '
nven
'
now they'll be out of water and at the mercy of the fire. He has spare r he blaze has swept over them and roared on towards K'mglake
fuel on the truck; he dashes back and grabs it. He's about to refill WeSt, but everything is still on fire-every house , every tree, every
when he realises that standing in the middle of a fire with buckshot blade of grass, eve~ the roots of the grass. There isn't much they can
embers blasting about him and a jerrycan of petrol in his hands is not do about it in their present condition; they have to get back to the
station, change their hoses.
such a good idea.
He started out thinking they could save the property. Now the They are able to respond to an emergency call from Vicfire: a
sheds are already gone and he's beginning to wonder if they'll be able critically injured resident in a dam nearby. They locate the prop-
to save themselves. First priority is shelter. 'Back to the house!' he yells erty and find that the Whittlesea captain, Ken Williamson, has
at his team, then throws both jerrycan and pump into the pool and sets already responded in his four-wheel-drive. The victim, Jason Lynn,
is in a terrible condition: badly burnt, convulsing, vomiting mud.
off running.
They are sheltering behind what they assume is a window when Williamson is desperately trying to get an ambulance. No success; he
it flies open and the owner of the house appears, urging them in. and his colleague decide to take the victim out themselves.
They don't hang around for a second invitation. Those solid walls Frank sees they're doing all the right things, knows he has to
offer some protection from the radiant heat. It's pitch black inside get back to his own base asap. They leave, clearing the track for the
the building. There's supposedly an elderly woman in here some- four-wheel-drive behind them as best they can.
where-the owner's mother-and a German shepherd, but they The fire truck is only a two-wheel-drive, and isn't equipped with
don't see either of them the whole time they're there. a chainsaw, so the journey back is rough: every few metres they pull a
They make fleeting sorties outside in pairs-to extinguish what tree off the road, drive round some obstacle, push their way through
they can and to keep an eye on things. They manage to save one of the another. Often they are forced to cut down fences and go cross-
cars, but come close to losing their own appliance; would have lost it if country. Everything is still burning savagely, and with the truck the
Frank hadn't raced out and moved it to a safer location. They watch way it is, a simple stump-hole would leave them in deep trouble.
their hoses burn, their water run out, their defences disappear. Frank They come across scattered individuals and groups, and each
considers putting out a mayday, decides not to: he doesn't want any of meeting deepens their concern about the calamity that has hit
his mates driving into this inferno to try and rescue him. their community. Survivors are staggering out of burnt buildings,
Eventually the storm dies down sufficiently for them to make a stunned, confused. The firefighters help wherever they can. They
longer trip outside. They look around, warily: has the worst of it encounter a mud-covered couple who were hiding in a dam while
~assed ? Looks like it. They manage to rig up a hose capable of spray- their house burned down; all they want is drinking water, which the
~ng a bit of water as long as one of the weightier members stands ~n firies are happy to provide. Others want lifts back to the CFA station,
it. They
. , black out the area aroun d the house to a stage where they so they make room, bring them aboard. Soon they have a crowd.
feel 1t s safe to leave it in th e han dsof thc owner, then dri ve bac k out They come across a farmer who's stroppy about them cutting
onto Coombs Road. his fence to get through, says he's worried about his stock escaping.
.J 96
97
!· _....__
/ IUNBLAIE-350

'
.
They realise the fellow is in shock, disorientated, having 1-ust seen h'15 HOME FIRES
house burn down. His stock are all dead. But they do th eu . be st t0
accommodate him. They cut just a small section of the ience c dow
one end, and replace it carefully behind them. Push on tnto . thn
blazing landscape. e
A.t the roadblock on -t~e Whittlesea Road, before the cool change
hits, Roger Wood gets mto the Pajero to follow the CFA crew back
to Kinglake West and help defend the station. As he throws the car
into gear his phone rings. He glances at the number: home.
'Roger!' Jo, his wife. Screaming. 'Roger, the fire's here!'
Jn St Andrews?
'Can't be-it's here. Must be smoke drifting in from .. .'
'I can see Aames in front of the house! '
He almost drops the phone. 'What. ..'
'It's coming right at us.'
In the background he can hear his children screaming. He strug-
gles to collect his thoughts, to control the panic spearing his chest.
'You know what to do, Jo. Fight the spots for as long as you can, then
get inside. Put the kids under wet blankets! Don't. . .'
The line goes dead. He stares at the screen, aghast, and frantically
dials the number. No answer. Tries again. Nothing.
Christ. What the hell is going on? St Andrews is twenty kilo-
metres to the south. What's the fire doing down there? How can it
be up here on the mountain and down there in the foothills at the
same time? Just how big is this bloody mon~ter? And _how is it _chat
he, the police officer responsible for the region, has still been given
171\-
absolutely no warning that the inferno is anywhere other than miles .
away?
If the flames there arc anything like the ones in front of him, his
fa mily arc doomed.
He hi ts the road . His natural inclination is to get back home,
9/1 99
,,,----
IUNGLAIE-150 IIIIEFIIQ
·he thought of his wife and kids facing this inr 0 ,,;,nse and the complications of a disast . .
post has IC . 1 . 1ern eJCr- . Th • er •n our increasing] )"
without him hits harder than any Saturday night brawler ever has. . us society. e policy now is to shift th . .. y 1t1-
g10 c respons1b1lity h
He'll try, but judging from the red angry flashes he can glimpst . d'vidual-a dubious development g· . h onto t e
in 1 . . . ' iven I at so few individuals
racing along the slope to his right, getting down the mountain is seem w1lhng or equipped to carry it.
going to be impossible in the foreseeable future . The serpentine road fire refuge or not, the locals are pouring • N . .
. , m. o sign of panic yet
to St Andrews will be cut off for sure. bu t Grover knows if hes to keep it at bay he an d h.1s bnga . d .'
e will
And he has a job to do, a job which, he suddenly intuits, is going ve to lead by example. The fire could be the . .
ha . . rem minutes: the last
to be the worst he's had in twenty-five years. thing he ~ants ts people crackmg up, doing stupid things. Making
He curses himself for leaving his family in that positio n. a run for it.
Everybody knew it was going to be a hell of a day. Why didn't he tell He gives the orders, and his members don't n••d to be toId twice.
.
them to get out when they could? They Position Tanker ~ne in front of the station and hook it up 10
He's racing back along the Kinglake road, furiously punchin water, lay 38- and 64-milhmetre hoses around the grounds and out
redial, his mouth dry, his heart jumping with each attempt. Th: onto the adjoini_ng oval. They start up the pumps and generator, and
phone goes unanswered, the ringtone tolling like a funeral bell. begin hosing things down.
Horrible visions roll through his head: the house in flames, his chil- As they work, they keep an anxious eye on the lire: from their
reading of the smoke it seems to be running along behind the station,
dren huddling . ..
He thumps the wheel. Puts his foot down. travelling in a south-easterly direction. Will it miss them ? Perhaps,
but Grover knows there's a southerly change due. When it arrives
The fire station at Kinglake West is a scene of furious activity by the the inferno will turn about, come driving up at them.
time he arrives. The captain, John Grover, is a worried man. Still It adds to the stress of his members that their pagers are constantly
no word from Frank Allan and the crew of Tanker Two. They've shrieking at them, and message after message is the same: members
clearly been trapped, burnt over, but have they survived? He's been of the public, often their own friends or family, trapped in houses
trying desperately to reach them on the radio, but there's been not and fighting for their lives. One message says there are forty to fifty
a word. No mayday, which is good. Unless they didn't have time to people in a single building.
There's not a thing they can do about any of that. The truck has
make one.
But Grover can do nothing about that right now. Hundreds of to stay where it is, protecting the growing crowd. Some firelighters
lives will depend on his decisions over the next few minutes. He's are so stressed by their inability to get to these jobs that they turn
always feared that the station would be the last resort of many in the their pagers off.
community. It wasn't designed as a refuge at all; it is, in reality, just Roger Wood assists where he can, stopping traffic from head-
an overgrown shed. ing into the fire, doing his best to reassure the public. It's a drop in
Strangely enough there are no lire refuges, in Kinglake or any the ocean. People are seriously afraid. Many, like Wood himself, are
separated from their loved ones. He's relieved when his colleague
t
other part of th e state, in this most lire-threatened corner of the
world. Country towns had them ~ntil a few years ago, but th e p~licy Senior Constable Cameron Caine appears, driving his old ute.
\ has been abandoned as authonues shy away from both the direct Cameron is as Kinglake as they come, a burly, goatee-bearded
JOI
/11~4{}(100
.JJ .. IINGUIE·l&O NOIE FIRES
ion local footballer, still remembered f, . thern l·nvolving police in one way or another- but s·l
1ence descen ds
k who was a cham P . or his n the network when they hear that word.
blo e d ['ne in Kinglake's 1994 premiership. Now d
ole in the forwar J • • a ays upO h . ' c.fi ·
Urgent. T ere 1sn t an 011 cer listening who doesn't understand
r 'd f the footy club, and, at thirty-five, sttll pulls on h
he's pres• ent O . tc he gravity.
. permitting. He's come m to work early, has alre d
1,oots ligaments a y t •VKC to Kinglake-350. That you, Woody?'
' th cation started up the generator.
been down to e s ' . A familiar voice. The operator is John Dunnell, a mate of Roger's.
. t discuss the situation but the conversation is
They begm O _ , . . cut They worked together at Greensborough years ago.
com D24: a four-car collmon on Deviation R d
short by a ca II ir . oa , 'JD, I'm in trouble here.' He glances away to his right: through
towards Kinglake. Reports of muluple casualci· .
fur th er eas t, es. the blackness, a terrible red glow. 'Flames all round the car!'
people trapped in cars, fire closing in.
•Get out of there, Woody! Getto safety! '
It sounds like chaos out there.
A pause. The glow gets brighter. 'Trying to, mate.'
Caine is staggered. He's just driven down that road, seen sign of
He lias no choice. To sit and do nothing is to die_To move could
neither accident nor fire. He immediately thinks of his own wife and
be death as well-he has visions of running off the road, tyres melt-
two children. While driving in, he'd spotted the first flames below
. · mmobilised. Fleeing vehicles slamming into his rear ending up
the escarpment and rung Laura, told her to take the kids and get out. mg, 1 '
like the pile-up he was heading for.
He assumes she'll be heading in to Kinglake. If so she'll be using that
But least he'll be doing something, and anything is better than
same road, the one that's now apparently slashed by fire and fatal
sitting paralysed by this smothering darkness.
accidents. He cranes his neck, looks back. Blackness. He reverses a couple of
Wood runs to the Pajero, sets off in the direction of the crash
feet. Hopeless--can't see a thing. The heat is growing, but the inside
while Caine follows in his ute. It's still light enough for Wood to
of the vehicle is relatively smoke free: he thanks the lord and Mr
see where he's going, so he revs it to the max, lights flashing, siren
Mitsubishi for the tight seals. But how long will that last? How long
screaming when anybody gets in his way. He hits 120, covers five
before the rubber melts, the windows? It's the smoke that gets you
kilometres in maybe three minutes. No collision yet, but the smoke
first, the poisonous fumes. He's seen burnt-out cars before, inciner-
is growing thicker.
He sweeps round a bend and--<:hrist, he's plunging into a wall of ated bodies. Doesn't want to end up like that.
He clenches the wheel, takes a deep breath. Moves at what feels
flame! He slams on the anchors, but it's too late. He has driven into
an inferno: there are flames all over the road (a fallen tree, he later like a snail's pace into a ten-point turn, worried that if he goes too
far off the bitumen he'll get snagged in the burning debris or melt
realises) and the scrub on either side is ablaze.
Darkness descends, a thick black mass of smoke envelops him: his tyres. He completes the manoeuvre. Facing what he hopes is the
he can't see a metre in front, and then it's behind. Trees are crash- direction from which he entered this hell hole, he inches forward.
ing, brands flying about, the roar of the fire enormous. My god, he Smooth surface under wheels. The road?
thinks, I'm about to die. Further forward . Yes; he sighs. The road.
He grabs the mike. 'Kinglake-350 to VKC Wanga ratta. Urgent!' He accelerates, ever so gently. Moves up to walking pace. Still
The radio is ringing w'th · exc hanges as cops all over the
1 f rant1c unable to see past the bull-bar, but more hopeful now that he's facing
state speak to each 0 th er-t here arc six
. hundred fires that day, all of the right direction. Further forward.
/02 103
 KINGUKE-350 IIOMEFIIES
At last, a streak of light through the swirling smoke. Is he , she comments. 'If it wasn't for them 1
day, d ' 'a ot more of us wouldn't
coming out of it? More light. He is. A stretch of time impossible to be here to ay. . .
judge: seconds? minutes? Time is going every which way, but the As Wood dnves, signs of calamity moun 1 . .
. . . up. cars dashing every-
light is brightening. He breathes again-no flame. Still smoky, but ere an inferno m the rear-view mirror fl h ffl .
wh ' . . , as es o ame glimpsed
the surroundmg hills. Fire all over th .
he's out of it. on e mountain. Spot fires
He opens the throttle. Races back in the direction of Kinglake presumably, swept from the main front by the wind. Soon they'!;
West with a battery of emotions storming though his brain. Thin~ coalesce, become a front themselves.
you idiot! There's a disaster hitting the community. He's received no He comes racing up to the Pheasant Creek supe rmar ket, then
official information, but if the storm has come this far, what has it h1·ts the brakes, groans out loud. 'Oh god , no .. • What are you domg
.
already destroyed? What kind of fury is falling upon the farms and here?'
bush blocks? On the heavily populated town behind him? There are dozens of cars parked around the store. People are mill-
But what can he do? Not much. He has responsibilities in a situ- ing about, huddled in little groups. More vehicles appear, passengers
ation like this, but he feels a terrible, unaccustomed helplessness. He piling out, waving arms and pointing, clutching each other. Some
has no information, little idea of what's going on. What's he meant are standing there with stubbies of beer in hand, like they're watch-
to do-run around and knock on every door? God knows, he'll ing the New Year bloody fireworks.
do what he can, but there are people all over the ranges, thousands He wonders, as he has before, at the primal instinct that drives
of them. He can only pray that most of them have taken precau- people together when there's a crisis. All very well back when the
:,
tions and have either got off the mountain or know how to defend crisis was a sabre-toothed tiger, perhaps; but not when it's a megafire
that could swallow them all and spit out the bones. He thinks about
themselves.
And always pumping away beneath his immediate worries is, for some of the famous photos from Black Friday in 1939, taken not
Roger Wood, the darkest question of all: what's happening to his so far from here, back when Kinglake was a timber town. All the
bodies--experienced bushmen, timber workers and farmers, their
family?
A vehicle comes towards him, driving into the fire. He flashes families--clumped together like cords of wood.
his lights, slows, winds his window down. 'Follow me!' he roars, He's pleased to see Cameron running towards him. Time like
this, there is nobody he'd rather have next to him.
waving.
The car turns. Others join it. Soon he's leading a small convoy. The rest of the crowd are standing round, some in singlets and
One of the vehicles is a four-wheel-drive towing a horse float, thongs. Drifting smoke restricts their vision: they don't know where
driven by a woman named Lisa Waddell, the owner of a nearby to go, what to do. They have no idea of what's coming. The very
Horseland store. She's just hitched up the float, grabbed her four- fact that they're hanging around when the air is thick with smoke
week-old son Charlie and fled the family farm, but everything is suggests they've broken the first rule of survival in a fire zone: stay
burning and she has no idea what to do or where to go. Then she sees or go, but if you do go, leave early.
that reassuring vehicle. They've left late.
Lisa recognises Roger later when he comes in to buy some gear They could hardly have chosen a worse spot to congregate. No
. plantation
sheIter and a pme • across th e roa d· p1·ne doesn't burn for
and thanks him . 'Always be grateful to Roger and Ca meron fo r that
104 105
[
 IINOLAIE-150
long ' but it goes up fast and furious. Behind them is • t h e Ph
01
SURVIVAL ARC
I
Creek srore: petrol bowsers, gas bottles, a horde of cars fiull of easa
And a fire bearing down on them. A catastrophe a bout to Petrol .
before his eyes. unfold
No. Nor if he has anything to say about it.
J-loW do humans res~n_d to d'.saster? Why is it that some people rise
co the challenge of a cr~s1s, tak1~g on roles ofleadership, while others
I>\"
. h r panic or retreat mto their shells?
e1t e
One of the first modern scholars to think seriously about these
matters was an Anglican priest by the name of Samuel Prince. Prince
happened to be in the town of Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the morn-
ing of December 6, 1917 when a French munitions freighter called
che Mont Blanc caught fire and exploded. Such was the power of the
blast that a fragment of the anchor was thrown more than six kilo-
metres; a gun barrel landed in a lake five and a halfkilomet~es away.
In the minutes that followed, the town was subjected to a battery
of traumas almost biblical in their scope: the explosion flattened the
town, blinding some one thousand people in an insrant~many of
rhe town 's residents had been at their office windows, staring with II
fasc ination at the ship burning in the harbour.
A tidal wave followed the explosion, then a fire swept through
the town. That night the devastated community was hit by a bliz- f
zard that finished off many of the injured who were still out in the
open. By the time the catastrophe was over, 1963 people lay dead.
Sa muel Prince had been eating breakfast at a restaurant near the
port when the blast occurred. He rushed to the scene, rendered what
assistance he could. But he wa s more than a cleric: he was a thought-
ful observer of human behaviour and a scholar. Certain things he
sa w tha t day stayed with him, left him wondering about humanity
and how it reacted to calamity.
Wh y w as it, he asked himself, that the first relief station was
/ (JG
107
...
KINOLAKE-350 \
SUIVIYAL AIC
. h db a troupe of travelling actors? How did patient
establts e Y .h s endur The stages on this arc are:
l
rations in the street wit out apparent pain? Ii e
emergency ope
.
it that a so
.

. .
ldier could spend the day workmg to assist victim h
eyes had been knocked out .
?
ow Was
s w en
I) Denial
Z) Deliberation
If
oneo fh 1sown .
In 1920 Prince published Caras_troph_e a~d Social Change, the first 3) The decisive moment
dy of human behaviour m times of crisis. Iii' . Most people who have the misfortune to be caught in a crisis will
sc hoIarIY stu . . s llla1n
s that we should learn from disasters. The book be . move through this arc, but they_will do it at different tempos, the
concern wa . , . · gins
. h m epi'gram from St Augustme: This awful catastrophe g . ~ ate of response governed by their personalities, life experiences and
;,aining. Every s~age of ~he arc, it can be argued, is based upon sound
the end but th~ beginning. History does not end so. It is the Way its
I chapters open. .
evolutionary logic: demal, for example, can help calm you down,
give you the mental capa~ity to move into deliberation mode; delib-
erating before you act will decrease the chances of your making a
In the last ninety years psychologists, physiologists, planners and
fatal mistake.
other professionals have taken up Samuel Prince's baton, and We
People in _the denial stage of the arc tend to display what psych-
now know a considerable amount about the normal human response
ologists call a 'normalcy bias': they can't believe what's happening.
to the abnormal occurrence of disaster.
Things have always worked out okay before, why shouldn't they
Not all of it is self-evident. You might expect widespread panic,
now? I've never been killed before, why should I be now? Sure,
for example, but disaster studies show that the victims are often
we've all got to go some day, but today is never going to be the day.
calm, orderly, considerate of their fellow victims. Think of those
These folk are seduced by the Lake Wobegon Effect-the town
long queues of people patiently making their way down the stairs at
where everyone is above average. This is why 90 percent of driv-
the World Trade Center, pausing to let colleagues from lower storeys
ers believe they are safer than most others, or why three out of four
enter the line, rendering aid to the injured. (One man, a quadriplegic
baby boomers imagine they look younger than their peers. Most of
in a wheelchair, was carried by ten of his colleagues down sixty-eight
us think we are less likely than our neighbours to suffer a divorce, a
floors.) That is, in fact, a more typical response than panic. dismissal or a heart attack.
There was evidence of such behaviour whenever people gath-
Initially, at least, we tell ourselves there is no crisis, that every-
ered in groups on Black Saturday. John Grover, the CFA captain at thing will be okay. For this reason we tend to be slow to react and
Kinglake West, was struck by the manner in which members of the reluctant to leave the scene, even when staying increases the danger.
public sheltering at the station helped each other out, assumed posi- During the September 11 attacks, for example, the occupants of the
tions ofleadership, assisted the old and the young. In Kinglake itself, towers waited an average of six minutes before attempting to evacu-
a number of nurses emerged from the crowd and began spontane- ate. At least a thousand took the time to shut down their computers,
ously rendering aid to the injured.
40 percent of them gathered up their belongings. Seventy percent
But accompanying this willingness to help their fellow victims discussed the situation with colleagues before leaving. Many phoned
are other, more complex reactions. Psychologists who have studied
th friends and family, sent emails, stood around wondering what they
e human response to disaster have identified what they term 'the were meant to do now.
survival arc'.
Sometimes the response can seem almost like lethargy. In the
108
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IUIYIYAL llC

1977 Beverley Hills Supper Club fire, for example, people remained i lly prepared. If you are going to leave I
. · waiting for somebody to take control. They were p . ,u ' eave ear1y Bute
planners know that many people will attempt a let~al co mtgency
customers, after all, and this was a classy joint. The performers f the two: they'll plan to stay, then make a £ . m tnation
kept performing, the diners continued to eat and watch the show o l fi I k 1·k run or it when they see
hat a rea re oo s I e.
w . .
as smoke crept in from the kitchen. Whether or not an individual What's gomg on m our brains to make us th'
. act is way? What
survived was largely a matter of initiative, but not necessarily their ns when we experience fear? Like a lot f th
hap pe . . 0 0 er aspects of our
own. Sixty percent of the club's employees tried to help their fellow behaviour, our_r~sponses_to '.mmment danger are governed lar el
victims, but only 17 percent of the guests did. One dining room had b the most pnm1t1ve of mstmcts. g Y
y . L l .
the good fortune to have an eighteen-year-old busboy with his wits One's hair, ror examp e, might stand on end N t .
· o a particu1ar1y
about him who promptly led them all to safety. Others didn't: many useful reaction these days, bm it is probably a genetic remnant of the
of the 165 dead were found-a bizarre image-still seated at their trait that makes threatened birds Aash their feathers, fish their fins
tables. A warning: watch out, I'm bigger than I look. ·
All of these phenomena were witnessed on Black Saturday. At the first sign of. danger, your neurons transnu·t a message to
'Normalcy bias', for example, is one of the reasons people fail the amygdala, an ancient, almond-shaped mass of neurons in the
to prepare their properties or leave early: they think of wildfire as temporal lobe of the brain. This in tum triggers a range of automatic
some sort of distant, abstract threat. Or denial: one of the survivors

t
responses throughout the body. The blood vessels will constrict, so
interviewed for this book described the terrible moment when the that you bleed less. The blood pressure and heart rate shoot up. A
fires came thundering over the hill. Her first reaction? This can't slew of hormones-cortisol and adrenaline in the main-surge
be happening. I've been dreading it for years, preparing for weeks, through the bloodstream, giving the gross-motor muscles a sort of
raking and pruning all day, but it can't be happening. bionic boost (which is why people in fear can be capable of great feats
This denial can add to the indecision. Stay and defend the house, of strength-and also why they sometimes experience an odd chem-
or make yourself scarce? The trouble with a bushfire, of course, is ical taste in the mouth). The muscles become taut, tensed, primed.
that indecision can be fatal. If you are grappling with the question of The body creates its own chemical painkillers. We are ready for
whether to stay or go when the fire--or even the smoke-is in sight, action: to Ace, fight or defend ourselves.
you've left it too late. The St Andrews firefighters still shake their All of this sounds positive. They all seem like reactions-hard-
heads in amazement at the fellow they came across blithely standing wired into us by evolution-that will help in a crisis. But these
on a ridge completely unprotected as the fire bore down upon them primitive responses can also lead to inappropriate outcomes.
all. 'What do you think I should do now?' he asked them. Sometimes, for example, the body will simply shut down. There's
'I'd suggest you get the fuck out of here,' somebody yelled from more to this than a calculated decision to play dead. A survivor of the
the back of the truck. 'We are!' Virginia Tech massacre, the only member of his class to come out
The knowledge that people will act this way is one of the dilem- of the atrocity unharmed, reports that his body was literally numb,
mas the emergency authorities must face. For yea rs they've been frozen with fear. He had no control whatsoever over his normal
attempting to hammer home the message: it is your choice whether bodily functions.
you stay or go, they say, but if you are going to stay, make sure you are To military psychologists, this is a well-documented reaction:
110 I II
 KINOLAKE-150 SUIYIYAL UC

. f extreme danger, they know, there will alw teC hnological change,'
. says Gordon Gallup• an expert on para Iys1s• m•
m moments o , ays be a
. cage of soldiers who simply curl up and do h'10 .
an rna ·ls 'Our brams search, under extreme stress , or an appropn-•
f,
certain percen . . . . not 1
fits security imphcattons, phys10log1sts have made g. ate survival response and c~oose the wrong one, like di vers who rip
Because o exten.
. d'es of this phenomenon: they know that the heart rat their respirators out of ~heir mouths deep underwater. Or like deer
s,ve stu 1 . . e and
cure drop the respiratton goes up, the eyes close or who freeze in the hea~l'.ghts ~fa car.'
tempera , gaic If there is one cns1s m which an active response is essential, it is
ahead, the pupils dilate. he bushfire. Report after report has emphasised the fact that your
For an individual in this situation, the thinking brain has
~st chance of survival is to stay alert, patrol your property, fight for
been bypassed. This is why those cl~sest to a disaster often have
as long as you can stand .. The firefighter's axiom-hit it hard and
little memory of it other than a stnng of random images. The
fast-is as valid on the micro scale as it is on the macro. The crack
part of the brain they use for solving everyday problems, even for
in the window that lets in the fatal spark may be easily defendable,
storing memories, is cut out of the loop. (It is also why some of
but you won't notice it if you're hiding in the bath-as 27 percent
the stories in this book may seem sketchy or episodic. Virtually
of Black Saturday's victims were doing when they died. (The bath-
everybody interviewed remembers events through an adrenaline-
room is possibly the most dangerous room in the house: it may
soaked haze: isolated images and incidents predominate; time is
have water but it usually has no escape route. Its reputation as a
distorted.) safe haven presumably comes from American tornado culture. Too
Paralysis must have had its evolutionary benefits. For example
much Wizard of Oz.)
a predator on the plains of Africa, having learned the dangers of
Another potential consequence of stress is tunnel vision.
eating rotten prey, would be more likely to leave the unmoving
Individuals can become so fixated upon a particular aspect of their
victim alone. You can see this in your own backyard: a bird will
situation that they will ignore others, potentially more fatal. In her
instinctively attack and seize a fleeing mouse but ignore a dead one.
excellent book on disasters, Amanda Ripley illustrate~this with the
If you were a small hominid and your attacker had the speed of a
story of an air crew coming in to land in Miami. They became so
leopard and the strength of a tiger, it could be your only option.
obsessed with the failure of their landing-gear green light to come
But in situations where technology has outstripped evolution, it
on that they didn't notice that they were losing altitude. The result-
can increase the danger. Kent Harstedt, a survivor of the sinking
ing crash killed 10 I people.
of the ferry MS Estonia-the worst sea disaster of modern times-
There were many examples of tunnel vision in the stories that
describes seeing large numbers of people standing on the deck doing
emerged from Black Saturday: the resident so worried about embers
absolutely nothing as the waves rolled towards them. Others made
zapping through a crack in the front window that he didn't realise
it to the lifeboats, but then just sat there, clutching the sides, making
the back of the house was engulfed, the firefighter so absorbed by a
no attempt to launch the boat as the Estonia slid under the waves.
burning tree in front of him that he didn't notice the flames roaring
Thos.e passengers were immobilised, frozen with fear. The paralysis
reaction may . .have had 1'ts uses JO
. our evolutionary past, but tn . the up behind.
As cortisol and adrenaline flood the body, they can interfere
cas~ of a smkmg ship, it led to death.
with that part of the brain responsible for complex thinking so that
d What. we may be w·t1ncssmg • 1,s a situation
. in which a previous IY
a apt1ve response has now become maladaptive as a consequence of even the basic ability to reason deteriorates. The most mundane
\
112 113
 IINOLAIE-150
IUIYIYAL QC
tasks-opening a door, turning on a tap, flicking a switch obviously the better the training the fr . . .
c • E . to sta c ' more e rect1ve 11 will be b
a pump-can become comusmg. motion overwhelms th _rt . eed not be rormal or organised A t , ut
. e brain 1t n . . · en-year-old English school
f
often at the expense o reason, sometimes at the expense of , . I named Tilly Smith was on a beach · Th .1 . ·
. -d.1gestwn, . an dbl adder contr
. sa 1·1vat1on other g1r . in at and in 2004 when
bodily funct1ons 1 ddenly the ttde ran out and the water be b
. . . o-which su c l gan to ubblc strangely
the amygdala recogmses as less important to immediate . he beach was ru I of tourists standin
A Kinglake firefighter remembers a mother scrambling u
survival
·
r enomenon, but
. ,
Tilly s class had seen a vid
d
bo
.
g aroun staring at the
.
·

.d h 1 . . be p onto Ph . co a ut tsunamis two

the truck with her kI s, t en apo og1smg cause they had w we eks before
. and she .recogmsed the signs· Sh e aIerted her parents,
their pants. 'They're not the only ones,' he replied, glancing
. at hctIS who organised a frantic evacuation of the beach minutes · beerorc the
crewmates. wave struck. It turned out to be one of the few in the area on which

4
None of these reactions, it should be remembered, are signs of nobodY was killed.
moral failing: of cowardice, incompetence or irresponsibility. They Another important element is leadership, particularly when those
are genetically programmed automatic responses to an abnormal affected by the disaster have _clustered, as they tend 10 do. Coming
situation that need to be understood if we are to improve our responses together for mutual support ts a natural instinct. On September I 1
in the future. 70 percent of the survivors discussed the situation with the peopl~
Nevertheless it is true that while some people curl up and die around them before taking any action. After the 2005 London tran-
others automatically swing into action. Why? Genetics has a lot to d~ sit bombings some victims refused to leave the Undcrgound, so
with it. Research into animal behaviour has found that the tendency reluctant were they to abandon the groups they'd formed.
to paralysis, for example, is passed on to offspring. Again, Black Saturday has its parallels. One survivor said that she
But in our own species the most effective response is based upon a was terrified to leave the truck that had rescued her, so desperate was
solid foundation of preparation, training and experience. The more she to remain with the group.
familiar the situation, the less chance of the braih shutting down or 'What' you actually look for in these circumstances is someone
succumbing to the more extreme manifestations of stress. That is who can tell you what to do,' said Ian, a victim of the London tube
why firefighters practise such basic skills as bowling out hoses and bombings. 'Even if it's just a basic "Stay here" or "Move there", you
operating pumps until their arms ache; they need those procedures just need guidance, because you are a bit all over the place, as you
to become ingrained, automatic. That is why every family in the can imagine.' For Ian, badly injured, the most comforting thing he
bushfire zones should practise fire drills until the kids are screaming heard was the voice of the driver telling him to make his way out of
with boredom. the tunnel.
Police officers like Roger Wood and Cameron Caine had the
If individuals or groups demonstrate any of the negative responses
outlined above-paralysis, tunnel vision, indecision-their best
kind of training and experience that made them less likely to go into
panic mode or develop tunnel vision. One of the firefighters who hope is that somebody will stand up and take control. They need
people with training and experience, who have been taught to assess
encountered Wood at a critical moment later that night was struck
by the way in which he seemed to be able simultaneously to maintain risks, to judge the best course of action, encourage others to follow.
· d· 'Th
Massad Ayob, a veteran police officer and trainer commente · . e
a conversation, issue instructions, make decisions and monitor the
· I · 1 I f what you'll do m a
wellbeing of the people around him . sing e strongest weapon 1s a menta P an °
114 ll5
 IINOLAIE-350

certain crisis. And an absolute commitment to do it, b

.. ' y god if h
cns1s comes to pass. ' te
•
Leadership. Experience. Judgment. A commitment to a pla n. Whe
the two police officers came together at Pheasant Creek th n
. ' e crowd
had a pair of leaders who ticked those boxes.
Months after the fire their senior officer, Acting Senior Se rgeant
Jon Ellks ' was to comment: 'Those two, .they're, smart and th ey ,re
sensible, both of them. Good coppers. If It hadn t been for them
'a
lot more people would have died that day ... They had a plan. Even
if they didn't know it, even if it was formulated in a moment, on the
run. Even if they had to bend the rules. They knew their community
backwards, they knew the options. All that knowledge and experi-
ence came together. They had a plan.'

116